Why is the modifier set to Friend in Winforms?

Question

When adding a new control to the designer in Winforms, the modifier on the control is set to Friend, but the default modifier is Private (right clicking the property and resetting the modifier).

Does anyone know why?

Is there a setting to set the modifier to default (Private)?

Answer 1

Are you sure it's showing as friend? I tried to reproduce the same here but it's always showing as private. Am using Visual Studio 2008.

After lot of googling, I eventually found some answers and they are right here on SO:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2772815/vb-net-what-does-the-friend-modifier-do

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2800618/set-a-project-default-for-vb-net-projects-so-that-the-default-modifiers-property

Answer 2

This is just the default which was chosen by the VB.Net IDE team. While I don't know the reason behind the decision my guess is that it was to maintain a compatible design experience with VB6.

There is no way that I know of to override this value